Lives Of The Unknown Book 1: The Legend of Andrew Lockeford (21 page)

The alien lieutenant stood back a
couple paces so that the three people in the room formed an
equilateral triangle. Bill was closest to the door, Andrew was
farthest, and Voriaku was to the side of the room.

Voriaku gave a quick look at the two
humans, both staring back, and said abruptly, “Start.”

Andrew lunged forward immediately
while Bill stood and stared. The proactive human gave a quick yet
powerful strike with his fist towards the alien, who had just as
quickly avoided the attack. Andrew’s fist bashed against the wall
with a loud sound that resonated within the room like a bell.
Voriaku retaliated with a jab to the abdominal area, which forced
the air out of Andrew’s lungs. Bill hesitated to step forward,
determined to see whether Andrew would really need his help or not.
As Andrew bent forward as of a reflex, he noticed Voriaku raise his
arm again before being hit by it in the face. The human was
propelled into the wall, having his nose broken. Voriaku stepped
forward, preparing to deliver a third and finishing blow, when
suddenly Bill stepped in and kicked him in the back. This startled
the Selentor for a brief moment as he turned around. Bill had a
trace of fear in his eyes, yet he covered it up as he set himself
up in a defensive stance. Voriaku directed all of his attention
upon Bill, ignoring the fact that Andrew had stood back up again.
Andrew made a gesture towards Bill, signaling that they would
attack at the same time.

“Hey, bastard,” said
Andrew.

Voriaku swiftly turned around to face
Andrew, preparing to raise his alien fist as he did so. He did not
have time, however, to react to the punch that Andrew delivered
right to his temple. Within a fraction of a second, Bill punched
the other temple as well, creating a heavy reaction force onto
Voriaku’s skull. The alien had fallen down to his hands, still
retaining his consciousness. Andrew knocked him out with a fully
forced kick to the chest. Voriaku showed no signs of waking up
soon, from the looks of it.

“That was too easy….I know it,” said
Andrew.

Bill immediately responded, “Who
cares? He’s down, let’s go!” and ran out of the room.

Andrew was hesitant to follow him,
making himself sure that Voriaku didn’t just let him win. He needed
to keep sight of Bill, so he ran out of the room as well. He and
Bill had turned at the nearest left and hurried down some
stairs.

Voriaku opened his eyes a minute later
with ease and stood back up as though he was just sitting down. He
brushed himself off as he heard the voice from the
ceiling.

“I was hoping that was just a setup,”
said Commander Fall. “Those humans should have been weak in
comparison to the true strength of your muscular
modifications.”

“I know what I’m doing. I’ll take care
of the newcomer first.”

“Very well. And make sure not to waste
too much time. We have given you a time limit for a
reason.”

Voriaku kept his eyes on the ceiling for a few
seconds, then he walked out of the room at a steady yet leisurely
pace.

Chapter 21

After ten minutes, Bill stopped due to a lack of
energy. Andrew caught up with him a while ago, and he had plenty of
energy left. His nose had even healed itself up a bit. What an odd
thing for a power-hungry alien to help out his foe with that
neon-green pill. And yet, at the same time, he had convinced
himself even more that Voriaku set him up by doing so.

“Hey, why’d you stop?” asked
Andrew.

“I’ve got a stitch,” said Bill. “I
guess I haven’t been in as much shape as I hoped to be.”

“Well, we’ve been running for….ten
minutes now, I suppose. Maybe we should think this through and find
a room with a door that will actually open.”

“Too bad all these doors have no
handles on them or anything.”

“Probably opened only by that
wristwatch thing Voriaku had.”

“Who?”

“The alien from just
earlier.”

“Oh.”

After a matter of seconds, the two
humans walked on until they found themselves in a curved hallway;
in the direction they were facing, the hall curved to the
right.

“Hey, you think that this hall is just
a big circle?” said Bill.

“Probably.”

“Then would there be a hall to our
right at some point that would take us to the center of the
ship?”

“But what if there is none? And what
if anything between here and the center of the ship is closed off
with doors? That we can’t open, by the way.”

“…
.Shit.”

“Although we can at
least try. And if we find a hall to our
left
, then we would end up on the
outermost hall, where we could find some escape
pods!”

“Aw, hell yeah! Now that sounds
better! Then we can get off this ship!”

Andrew opened his mouth, then he
slowly closed it back up as he was crushed by a fact of reality.
“What if the doors to the escape pods won’t open
either?”

“…
.You know what? Let’s
just go find out already! It’d probably do us good to at least try
and find out.”

Andrew remained silent, then he nodded
after a few seconds.

As they both found
out, the hall they were already walking through
was
the outermost hall on the ship,
and all there was to their left were closed doors. However, when
they had just gone in a complete circle, a door to their right had
suddenly opened, unknown to the both of them why. Beyond the door
was a room, containing large cylindrical tanks in the center and
storage containers to the sides. All of the tanks were filled with
a green liquid that was more transparent than opaque. What was
within the liquid had varied from tank to tank. Some of them had
only a flexible tube that went halfway up the center of the tank,
with a little alien embryo attached to the tube that was slightly
larger in diameter. In other tanks were Selentors that looked
young—perhaps the equivalent of four- to six-year-old human
children, and there were no tubes. All of the beings in the tanks
had their eyelids closed, but plenty of the more developed ones had
moved before the humans’ eyes.

Andrew and Bill were both speechless
for a good ten seconds. Bill broke the silence by saying, “Is this
real? Is this really what I think it is?”

“It’s some kind of mass production,
made just for living beings.”

“I was thinking more like an alien
army. You know, clones that are made to be perfect so they could be
the best in the universe.” Bill chuckled a little as he said his
second sentence, trying to accept the idea of it as a joke. But
Andrew accepted the idea of a biologically-perfected infantry as a
realistic truth. Perhaps this mass production of the Selentor’s own
species was for both civilian and military purposes, he
thought.

———

Voriaku walked down a straight hall up
to a door to his left. He peered through the little window on the
door for a brief moment, then he continued with his stroll. Beyond
that little window were a dozen inactivated robots, all lined up
and hanging on racks.

“God, this is horrifying,” said Bill.
“There are so many things that are fucked up about
this.”

“But the Selentors see nothing wrong
with it. They think that everything they do and think is
right.”

“Why? Why the hell is that?” Bill
raised his hand towards one of the tanks. “These guys aren’t even
really….real!”

“Nothing here is real! Not here, or
anywhere else in the universe!”

“Yeah! We….wait, what?”

“The only place that really counts
would be Earth….and maybe some of the planets around Earth. Do you
know that this isn’t the first time I’ve been on an alien ship like
this?”

Bill developed an expression of
bewilderment. “Well, I did hear something from earlier, like how
you contacted someone or something?”

“The AOIB.”

“Yeah, that’s it. So are they like
another alien species, or what?”

Andrew kept his mouth closed for a
couple seconds before responding. “They’re an intergalactic
organization—some dominant superpower in the universe that’s pretty
much at war with the Selentors. And I don’t think they’re that much
different.”

“What do you mean?”

“I landed on one of
their planets, and they treated me fine, but I felt like they were
hiding stuff from me. I remember going onto the roof of a
skyscraper, and all I saw were more skyscrapers. There was nothing
but gray buildings and flying cars and people everywhere. And from
what I heard, that kind of place took up
ninety
percent of the
planet.”

“What the
fuck?
”

“Yeah. And the remaining ten percent
was mostly ocean, and a giant volcano. That was the only place that
I saw something green there.”

“…
.Damn.
But it doesn’t
sound
like they were hiding anything from you. I mean, you got to
see the only untouched place—sort of—in the whole planet! Am I
right?”

“No, it’s not like
that. It’s just that….when I was on top of that skyscraper, I could
see
thousands
of
aliens with my naked eye. And yet the only people that I met were
the members of the AOIB. And maybe some bald squirrel-dude, but I
don’t know what that was all about. I think it was just a
dream.”

Bill kept his mouth open without
uttering a word until he could put this puzzle of ideas
together.

“It was like
I
was the alien, being
held captive while hidden to the public. Maybe I was just some
tool—no, more like some bio-weapon under their control. Do you know
why I’m taller?”

Like any befuddled human, Bill could
not respond immediately. But he did give an answer: “Because of
those genetic mods the alien was talking about?”

“Yeah. He wasn’t the one who modified
me—mostly. It was the AOIB.”

Bill rubbed his hands on his face.
“Ugh, this really is a pain for my head. I just wanna go back to
Earth—” He jerked his head up. “Why the hell are we still here
anyway?!? We should just find some way to open those doors to the
escape pods, and then we can go!”

Andrew said nothing.

“Don’t just stand there! Help me look
for something! Maybe there’s a device in one of these cabinets
here….”

Still standing in his place, Andrew
remained speechless.

“God fucking
dammit,
they’re locked!
”

“Of course they would be.”

Bill turned around to see Andrew’s
eyes meeting his, only with a look of hopelessness.

“Everything that’s going on here,”
said Andrew, “is under the Selentor’s control. They know what
they’re doing, and they sure as hell aren’t going to let us
go.”

“What are you talking about? We found
this room, didn’t we?”

“DON’T YOU SEE?!? This door didn’t
open up on it’s own! We were led here on Voriaku’s own
will—”

“That guy’s dead, though!”

“Then it’s the commander’s doing! He’s
the guy in charge of the ship, watching our every move, making sure
nothing goes out of hand for him….everything that these people do
is based on control.”

Bill began to look
horrified.

“Whether they’re robots or organic
beings, they still think of themselves superior to us, for reasons
that I still don’t really understand….there were robots at the
AOIB, as well. Androids, too.”

“…
.How do you know
that?”

“There were two guys that I saw get
destroyed by Voriaku, and their insides were metallic and electric.
I didn’t see any blood.”

Bill squatted down, his fright more
overt now. “So what, you think that we’re all just doomed? That
mankind is just gonna end up like all these aliens? I’m sure as
hell not gonna kill myself now just because you say it’s hopeless.
We will get through this! Earth will get through this!”

“And how the hell would that work?!?
Even if by some miracle we get back to Earth in one piece, there’s
still going to be an intergalactic war that’ll suck all of humanity
into it! You heard Voriaku mention that, didn’t you?”

“We can warn people! We could tell
them the aliens’ plans!”

“Do you even hear yourself? We’d just
be called a bunch of lunatics! There’s no hope in helping them, and
there’s no hope in helping me! Why did you even come here to save
me, anyway?”

“Because we’re friends!”

“No! No we’re
not!
We never were in the first place! You
bullied me and tortured me in high school! How the hell have you
changed?!?”